Del idiolecto a la gramática sociohistórica: un modelo de cambio lingüístico El caso de algunos cuanti cadores del español

Abstract

t is beyond doubt that the concern about language evolution has been a recurring issue in Linguistics. Nevertheless, it is not so common to find a study that has approached change and linguistic variation separating the individual from the linguistic community in which he is integrated. The present dissertation, titled Del idiolecto a la gramática sociohistórica: un modelo de cambio lingüístico. El caso de algunos cuantificadores del español (From idiolects to socio-historical grammar: a model of linguistic change. The case of some quantifiers in Spanish) is born precisely with the main objective of understanding on the one hand how languages change and the role speakers have in this process, and all aspects surrounding those speakers on the other. The other objective is to offer a new work methodology that allows researchers to collect, describe and analyse data in a different way in order to offer hypotheses that are, not only verifiable, but also falsifiable. The central axis on which this proposal will be articulated will be the acquisition process of a language. We shall illustrate this new proposal with the case study of some quantifiers in Spanish. One of the most original outcomes of this theoretical proposal is a novel way to view grammaticalization. Thus, I propose a definition of grammaticalization as an epiphenomenal concept which encompasses the successive featural readjustments which cause microparametric changes. These reanalyses yield the functional paradigmatisation of a lexical item. This assumption surmises that there exists a relationship between functional and lexical units that is only attributable to the presence of the same kinds of features in the two classes of items. In order to formalise this intuition I have included the notion of chains of linguistic conditions. Hence, in every process of acquisition, the data within a coherent system must have shown the necessary linguistic conditions for a change to take place potentially. In turn, the same change will be potentially predictable as long as these conditions are present. The move from causality to conditionality mainly implies a different way to deal with the data. If we further consider that the best documented sample of a coherent linguistic system can only be extracted from an i-language, the optimal work method for our purposes is the idiolect-type corpus. Additionally, the results obtained by means of this methodology of collection, ordering and analysis of the data has enabled me to lay out the language change and variation in terms of predictibility, potentiallity and impossibility. By means of this methodology I am able to explain the linguistic change retrospecitvely and to predict the potential changes that may take place at the level of the speaker. I have shown the feasibility of my theoretical and methodological proposal by studying the case of Spanish bastante "quite" from a panchronic, lexicographic and idiolectal viewpoint. As a result of this case study I have come up wth four chains of linguistic determinants that account for the transition of certain adjectives into quantifiers, whether they be in number, quantity or degree. The distinct feature bundles that I have proposed for such chains have been subject to verification and refutation by means of elements like suficiente "enough" and harto. This thesis seeks to pave the way for a novel understanding of what we mean by linguistic change and for a new way to approach it. A theory of this sort reinforces the idea of universal grammar, which postulates universal cognitive mechanisms and confers a mediator role between inner and social aspects on the acquisition process. Both of these aspects would have a different but intrinsically related labour. The idea is not to forecast the future of a language, but to offer a careful insight on what the language of the future may be prepared to by examining the attested data in the past.

Date of Award	4 Oct 2013
Original language	Spanish
Awarding Institution	Department of Spanish Studies
Supervisor	Carlos Sanchez Lancis (Director)